Posted on 05/03/2004 9:42:01 AM PDT by kattracks
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. truck driver Thomas Hamill was holed up in a six-foot-by-six-foot windowless stone shack in central Iraq (news - web sites) when he decided to make a run for it Sunday, escaping his armed abductors after three weeks in captivity.
Hearing the sound of American Humvees nearby, Hamill kicked down a metal-plate door propped up by a piece of wood and made a stumbling dash across tomato fields with only socks on his feet, hoping to reach a U.S. patrol some 400 yards away.
"He was shouting, 'I'm an American, I'm an American POW (prisoner of war)' and he was waving his shirt above his head," 1st Lt. Joseph Merrill, one of the soldiers who came across Hamill, told a news conference Monday as he described the first sight of the hostage.
"He was unshaven and thinner than when he was taken, but other than that he was OK. He was just real happy to see us."
Hamill, a dairy farmer who came to Iraq to make money and pay off debts at home, was kidnapped on April 9 after his convoy came under attack west of Baghdad. He was working for Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of U.S. group Halliburton.
His abductors threatened to kill or maim him if U.S. troops did not withdraw from the besieged city of Falluja.
Monday, Hamill left Iraq by plane and arrived at an American medical facility in Germany where he was due to receive medical treatment for a minor gunshot wound to his right arm. He was also expected to be reunited with his family.
The 43-year-old Hamill was seized in the town of Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, but was being held in a remote village near Samarra, 62 miles north of Baghdad, when he escaped.
Soldiers from C company of the 108th Infantry Regiment, a New York National Guard unit attached to the 1st Infantry Division, were patrolling just a few hundred meters away when they saw a man running toward them.
"We were checking out a broken (oil) pipeline," said Capt. George Rodriguez, the company commander. "At first we thought it was an Iraqi farmer, but then we heard him shouting that he was an American and quickly realized that it was Hamill."
They bundled him into a Humvee and got him out of the immediate area before treating his arm and offering him food and water. He took the water, but declined the food, saying he had already been fed that morning.
Then, on Hamill's suggestion, they went back to the stone bungalow house near where he was held to see if they could catch his captors. The soldiers found an AK-47 assault rifle abandoned outside the front door and then arrested two men working in the fields nearby.
"He was basically in the middle of nowhere," said Sgt. Mark Forbes, another member of C company. "It's like desert and nothing else all around out there."
Rodriguez said the nearest house was probably a mile or more away across swathes of barren scrub and flat fields used to produce tomatoes and other vegetables.
Hamill said he had been moved to the shack next to the farmhouse that morning. Inside he had some simple medical supplies, snack food and a basic bed made out of cushions and a blanket. He didn't know what day of the week it was.
The soldiers asked him why he didn't try to escape sooner.
"I'll tell you what he replied," said Forbes. "He said, 'I could have escaped a bunch of times but where was I going to go? I only had a bottle of water and no map. What was I going to do?'
According to the article, they "then arrested two men working in the fields nearby".
Red
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